The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus - Softcover

Vincent, Bev

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451213041 ISBN 13: 9780451213044

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2004

Synopsis

AN ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE DARK TOWER SERIES—INCLUDING BOOK-BY-BOOK ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT INTO STEPHEN KING'S CREATIVE PROCESS.

In 1970, Stephen King embarked on what would become the crowning achievement in his literary career-the Dark Tower. The seven-volume series, written and published over a period of 30 years, was inspired by Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," as well as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone.

With the full cooperation of Stephen King himself, The Road to the Dark Tower examines the epic journey of the author to complete a story that threatened to overwhelm him. In this indispensable companion, Bev Vincent presents a book-by-book analysis of each volume in the series, tracing the Dark Tower's connections to King's other novels including The Stand, Insomnia, and Hearts in Atlantis, and offering insights from the author about the creative process involved in crafting his lifelong work-a work that has consumed not only Stephen King, but his legion of devoted readers. This is essential reading for any Dark Tower-or Stephen King-fan.

About this title

About the Author

Bev Vincent has been a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine since 2001, writing the News from the Dead Zone column that appears in every issue. He is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated com­panion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower Companion, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion. 

His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands, and The Blue Religion. He is a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews. Vincent lives in Texas with his wife.

Reviews

How does one determine what the greatest work of an author’s career is? The answer to this query, posed in the final pages of this book, can be found throughout Vincent’s in-depth analysis of King’s seven-volume Dark Tower epic (The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, etc.). Making sense of a story that switches back and forth through time, across multiple universes, and involves the safety of a tower that represents the fate of all existence is no easy task. Kudos to Vincent for even trying. But readers beware—the work is analyzed in its entirety, so expect spoilers galore. Vincent—whose column on Stephen King, "News from the Dead Zone," appears in Cemetery Dance magazine—tracks the evolution of both King’s three-decade avocation (the very first line was written in 1970) and the development of the saga’s characters and plot. Most importantly, Vincent shows how the few members of gunslinger Roland’s fellowship, recruited to help him protect the Tower, slowly evolve from reluctant participation to resolve about their leader’s quest. Former cocaine addict Eddie, for example, puts his sarcasm and skepticism aside and learns to embrace the dream of his surrogate father. As Vincent writes, "If Roland were to die on their journey, Eddie would continue with the others, for having dreamt of the Tower and the field of roses, the compulsion to reach the Tower claims him, too." Vincent also devotes a full chapter to discussing some of King’s other works that are related to the Dark Tower series, such as Hearts in Atlantis and Insomnia. In light of King’s own admission that the Dark Tower epic is the nexus of all his books—"The Dark Tower finishes everything that I really wanted to say"—Vincent asserts, "What else, then, is a magnum opus if not something that both ties together and summarizes a person’s life’s work?" With this thorough analysis of King’s epic, Vincent proves himself a master of the Dark Tower world.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Vincent's expansive synopsis of horrormeister King's Dark Tower saga arrives nipping the heels of its seventh and last volume, The Dark Tower [BKL S 1 04]. Besides recapping the epic itself, Vincent points out the most germane aspects of other King novels and stories that touch upon it, sketches its leading characters, notes influences on it, and discusses its creation and the layered, self-consciously reflexive concept (King himself is a character in it) that animates it. Appended are chronologies of the saga's writing and publishing and of events in its main setting, Mid-World, and in "Keystone Earth" (i.e., our reality from the 1950s on, but including the saga's characters' doings when, at various times, they enter it), a too-small Mid-World glossary, and the Robert Browning poem that initially inspired King. The large and perdurable King fandom should embrace Vincent's effort and spur him to correct misstatements about the Odyssey and Dante's Commedia, in particular, in the chapter on influences and explain the saga's many pop-cultural references (e.g., the Crimson King) in future editions. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451213041
• ISBN 13: 9780451213044
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368